To be fair, initially the primary thing I saw them associate with the anniversary was a raffle where 10% of players win… literally the cheapest item they sell. I don’t particularly care since I don’t need any more characters for the sporadic play I engage in, but I can understand why it might have felt like them giving the player base the finger. If you really don’t want to do a giveaway, then avoid it. Don’t do some cheapskate lottery thing.
I love Genshin but Mihoyo really deserved the shelling it got for the anniversary rewards that it announced. Quite possibly they wanted to hold some rewards as a surprise but that entirely backfired. The make-up rewards are quite generous and I believe the community has calmed down somewhat, but the popular opinion is that the most recent 5-star (Kokomi) is worse than the free-to-play healer you get right at the start. The conspiracy theory is that Mihoyo is building gameplay which cripples other characters to make this new character necessary, but this enrages the existing player base who would have spent time and possibly money to build out their other healers/shielders.
It’s a difficult road for Mihoyo since Genshin has no PvP content, it has to keep creating world content which the base devours in hours, and new gacha content is critiqued and meta’d for power vs value, and potentially new game play loops. I think Mihoyo has a couple more years to go but it will be a challenge holding on to the base unless it reinvents the gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LonKGuS9uuQ&ab_channel=ScaryFoxy
Myhole, can you be a bit less stingy?
Even if it was poorly considered I’m glad there was backlash. I like seeing Mihoyo make big missteps like this - I’m a gacha accelerationist.
Already many of the Genshin apologists I know have been forced to give up the gun, because the daily frustration of the money-extraction mechanisms eventually eroded any fun they were having with the actual game.
For anyone interested in Genshin, music or both, the anniversary concert for Genshin Impact is now available. I’m no musician but I loved it as a testament of love and the truly amazing job Mihoyo did putting the music together.
So I’ve been playing for a couple of months now, and finally decided it would be time to post about it. And look, there’s a thread already!
I absolutely loved the experience up through about AR 30. You have to enjoy the anime aesthetic, of course, but as long as that’s not an issue the world is beautiful and a blast to explore. I felt like I was following along a season of an anime show going through the story quests, and it’s just the cutest thing every time you meet a new character. Combat is decent, although still a bit more twitch-reaction than I like, but the part I like best is the wide variety of non-combat stuff to do. Sheer world size gives you plenty of exploration to do, and there’s even some moderately interesting puzzles in some places.
But then things start to slow down as combats get more difficult, leveling characters/weapons requires more and more materials, and you start to hit the gated resource acquisition. It’s not terrible through the mid-40s, but once you’re pushing AR 50 and are getting characters up to level 80 and 90, it’s a real slog. The low drop rates on the materials you need from boss fights and domains is a real turn-off. I’m at AR 52 now and have three L90 characters, but none of them are close to maxed out on talents because it’s just such a pain to get the materials. And when you decide you want to level some different character…then it’s a pain to gather everything you need to push them through all the lower levels, on top of grinding for the high level materials.
Then there’s the pay-to-win gacha stuff, with the 5-star weapons and characters. I’ve largely ignored it, just doing a few wishes each month with the primogens I get along the way. I did throw in $20 for the monthly pass thing (twice), largely because I like to put a little money into any F2P game that I enjoy, but that’s the extent of my spending. I like that it’s possible to go through the game this way, but it’s certainly something of a slog, and I’ve got Shogun-envy like everyone else who’s not spending a ton on wishes.
I’m still playing, but a lot less than I did at the start. I’m at the end of the (current) main storyline, and the side quests remaining aren’t super interesting. I spend an hour or so most days, doing my daily quests and killing a boss or clearing a few domains. I’ve still got some exploration to do, but the slowness of progression in my characters means I’m not enjoying it as much.
The thing that still gets me excited to play is when we get an interesting new event. Some of them are pretty poor - I hated the ukelele-playing thing earlier this month - but most of the events are well done. I particularly liked the “stove god” one with the cooking competition. The current one with the customizable domain isn’t quite as good, IMHO, largely because it seems tuned to a higher difficulty level. I can still do it with my F2P team (my go-to lineup is Barbara, Xiangling, Kaeya, Razor) but it can be a struggle. Still, it’s fun, and every new event gives me something to look forward to.
I’m still liking the game enough that I’ll keeping picking off a few things here and there until the next major update. Hopefully that will open up more interesting storylines and exploration to dig into.
I like that the game is slowly but steadily improving on most fronts. The puzzles in Inzauma have been more interesting than those in Monstadt and Liyue, the events have been better (ie. 2nd tower defense was much better than the 1st) and they’ve been pretty good at patching away the more egregious combat/balance issues (pyro hypostasis, cc-immune samurai)
If you’re running into difficulty spikes, you could try some of the meta 4* teams (ie. Bennet/Xiangliang/Xingqiu/Flex, or Sucrose/Fischl/Beidou/Flex) Also, generally levelling characters to 90 is inefficient, 80/max ascension is a good stopping point for most characters (unless they have dual scaling like Hu Tao)
That’s a bit counter-intuitive. Does the level of character vs monster not matter? I just assumed that fighting L90 monsters with an L80 character would be putting me at a significant disadvantage (as is the case in almost every other game I’ve played).
The difference is tiny IIRC, like a few percent. Level 80 is more than enough, and I think going from level 80 to 90 takes as much resources as going from 1-80 (or something like that) Better to invest in grinding good arifacts, getting your weapons maxed, important talents to 8+. What 5* characters do you have? Childe (on the banner currently) is not a bad pick, probably more versatile than the next few banners to come.
Ah, ok. I’m used to games like City of Heroes or Path of Exile, where going up against something 8+ levels higher than you is generally a death wish. Level seems to matter less in GI, at least as compared to all the other stuff you mentioned.
Just Mona and Aloy. Haven’t done much with Mona at all yet, as she sorta overlaps with Barbara whose healing is too useful to ignore. I’m working on leveling Aloy at the moment, as I don’t have another decent bow user (sorry Amber). And I like that she doesn’t need constellation upgrades to be good (at least not yet). I despise Childe personality-wise, though if he dropped in my lap on a wish I wouldn’t throw him back. :)
Do you have Bennett (the Broken AF)? You could probably build a decent vaporize team around him and Mona.
I’ll have to check if I have Bennett next time I log in. I think he might have popped in on my last wish batch. Obviously I haven’t done anything with him yet! What’s so broken about him?
His ultimate is a heal + substantial damage boost, and he can have a lot of uptime on the ability. Plus he’s Fire, which last I played had all the best reactions.
This is a team that you want at 90 (well, Sucrose at 90) no? Sucrose driving reaction team using fixed damage reactions that scale on level. 33-40% more reaction damage from at 90 over 80.
I thought Sucrose was mostly there to increase other party member’s Elemental Mastery and lower enemy resistance with Viridescent Venerer set bonus, and that her own damage was secondary.
Yeah it’s not clear to me whos generating the fixed damage reactions (not having played that comp). Whoever is the one doing so is the one that should be at 90.
I am AR 56 so just weighing in a little here.
Going from 80 to 90 is really unnecessary for most characters with some notable exceptions - I ascend purely to be able to vanity max my damage on my key main DPS characters, but primarily to ramp up talents just that bit more and that really isn’t required to beat all content. The two exceptions I felt that had more impact going from 80 to 90: Zhong Li because HP scales better from 80 to 90, and that increases his shield, and Venti, whose ability to pick up mobs depends on his level. Since you don’t have either of these, don’t sweat 90. Most tubers will tell you the same.
Talents - there is value going all the way to 10, but the diminishing returns from 8–>10 usually doesn’t make the investment of time (or money) worth it if you have other characters waiting in line.
Team composition is one of the most critical overlooked damage maximisers. If you look at the National Team (Xiang Ling, Chong Yun, Bennett and Xin Qiu) - they are all four stars but they hit like a truck through elemental reactions. Watch a few videos as to when to swap out, hit your Es and Qs and then swap back in.
Weapons - the biggest return on value for me is picking and maxing the right weapons. There are plenty of really strong F2P weapons (recently Ocean Catch which was a real pain to grind for!). I don’t roll the weapon banner but the positive thing about Genshin is that if you run the boss fights weekly you’ll eventually get enough mats to craft the F2P 4-stars and most of them are decent. Maxing a weapon to 90 >>> maxing a character to 90. Weapons have the extra value of being swappable to other characters.
World Level - I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve dropped the World Level to beat certain events. If things are getting too hard, drop the World Level. I don’t think that even impacts the rewards, just the challenge.
Save your Primogems to grab a 5-star character you really want (you need 180 rolls to be sure) and I usually also consider whether the other 4-stars are worth it.
If you really enjoy Genshin, it’s probably worth springing the $5 for the Blessings. The $15 BP is optional, really.
The top most broken character is Zhong Li, don’t let anyone tell you different. Anyone who can pop a shield which lets you ignore almost all enemies is just… broken. If his banner (ever) comes out again, beg borrow and steal to get him. I heard Ganyu is also broken but DPS characters are a dime a dozen.
The best DPS elements are fire and cold for shield-breaking and complementary damage. Those electro and hydro shields are usually best dealt with using cold.
edit: another vote for Bennett who fits in ANY team.
I’ve heard Bennett is also good to get to 90 since his aura scales off of base stats.
Thanks for all the info, folks. Clearly I have a lot of character review to do! What are you folks using for the talent materials domain? I keep having to beat up all cold guys in the Forsaken Rift and it’s annoying. The best I’ve come up with is Noelle, Xiangling, Razor, Lisa - the fire-electric reactions work well but my team dies fast to all those stupid ice crystal drops and flopping slimes. I suppose Bennett is the answer there too? :)
Yeah, that’s true, transformative reactions (swirls/electrocharged/overcharge/superconductshatter) the damages scale with level as well. For overcharge and EC pariticularly it’s hard to guarantee who triggers the reaction, but for swirls it’s always the anemo unit, that’s why Sucrose taser works so well. The anemo units are worth getting to 90 as well if you’re relying on reaction damage/CC.